Folding Our Atlas Into Paper Planes
by mirrored.waves
Summary: His skin is warm and comforting and her favorite place to hide from the cruelties of their job and this life they find themselves wrapped up in. Steve/Kono!


Hello, everyone!

Okay, first of, for everyone who is reading my other story, I am almost finished with the final chapter. I had some issues with my computer recently that resulted in all of my documents being deleted, included the nearly completed product of that story. I had to start from scratch with it and I am now just trying to work out a few issues I have with it, but I promise! It's coming.

Anyway, onto this story that you have clicked on. This is really nothing more than sentences/prompts/paragraphs/ideas that have just been simply floating around on the notepad of my phone that I always planned on turning into larger stories, but just never got around to. None of this pieces are really connected, or at least they aren't in my head, but - as the reader - you can do whatever you wish to with this. It's all up for interpretation! Again, I may expand on some of these ideas one day, but who knows.

There are most likely mistakes in here somewhere, I have no doubt, and they are all my own. I'm warning you, this is all very rough, fresh off the fingertips! lol

Okay, so I'm done with that. Enjoy! Let me know what you think.

.

_pairing: _steve mcgarrett/kono kalakaua

_fandom: _hawaii five-0

_genre: _drama/romance/angst

_disclaimer: _still not mine, sadly.

* * *

_folding our atlas into paper planes. _

She is young and hot and totally badass and emotional available to everyone except for him.

Because he is not young, definitely not stable in any sense of the word, and there are boundaries. Strict boundaries which are think and blinding, blurring his vision whenever she is around, tempting his will power with her long, tanned legs as they rest against the edge of her desk while she tackles the mound of paperwork sitting before her, and her incredible ability to shoot and strike with such expertise that he almost does not care whether or not Chin would likely murder him in broad daylight were he to ever touch his cousin.

.

Definitions are good. They are important and needed in many aspects of life.

Or at least that's what Kono chooses to believe when thinking about the lack of one her relationship with Steve has been given.

.

She finds one of his old high school football jerseys from his quarterback days in some box in a random corner of his house. Her slender fingers play with the fabric as a mischievous smirk begins to toy at her lips. He wonders what she could possibly be thinking, but ultimately gives up, knowing that she is most definitely a mystery he's not interested in solving, but rather discovering and exploring over time.

.

Steve's skin is warm and comforting and her favorite place to hide from the cruelties of their job and this life they find themselves wrapped up in.

His skin is scarred and broken, torn apart by his years of service, threatened and confronted by enemies only others face in their dreams.

But more importantly, his skin, though damaged and hardly what it was before, is covered in tattoos. They are dark and winding, designs laced with meanings he has never once revealed to her before, but he tracks her down one day in the middle of a hectic case and shows her a new one (still bandaged and red) placed directly over a scar that's healed and it's then that she knows his fractured soul is healing. And in the darkest nights of their most intimate moments, that tattoo will always be Kono's favorite to draw circles around.

.

In a hotel room on the other side of the world, surrounded by a new language and culture, Steve finds himself desiring and yearning for a life he had left behind so many lifetimes before it seems.

Eventually (and against his better judgement), he calls her.

The bed beneath him is firm and hard to sleep on, leaving his back sore and aching while the phone clutched in the grasp of his sweaty palm shakes as he struggles to calm the rapidly beating heart pounding in his chest and the racing thoughts from clouding his vision. His attempts to convince himself that too much time has gone by, that far too much distance (four countries and almost two years to be exact) has been placed in between for any one of his apologies to matter fails miserably.

He's screwed up and he screwed them up.

But in a different timezone entirely, her phone rings loudly, echoing throughout the tiny bedroom of her apartment three times before she musters the courage to answer.

Steve's throat closes up at that sound of voice, sound older and wiser now, guarding to everything he is and all that he has put her through before.

For a while, she questions him, asking where he has been all this time and why he left her alone.

.

Steve wants her to fix him, to heal scars and wounds that somehow manage to reopen every other day like clockwork - though she continues to bandage them up again over and over, without fail. She hopes to stop it, but he still bleeds, years of damage pouring out of his pours, continuing to plague him in his hours of weakness though she is constantly reassuring him that all of that is over now.

And while she wishes to be exactly what he needs, to be all he will ever desire, it all becomes far too overwhelming for a girl who's hardly keeping herself together, struggling with crumbling dreams and foreign emotions bursting through at all the wrong times.

.

In her dreams, Kono is surrounded by waves. Blue and thick and rolling all around her body. She kicks and screams and fights the currents until her throat burns and her legs cramp. Her useless body gives up on her then, providing her with no other destination but the bottom, accompanied only by the sorrows of others.

She dreams of waves that will take her away from this. This pain, the disappointment she feels whenever she becomes tortured by memories of missed opportunities and a broken dream, while he - both self destructive and wounded - spends his nights thinking of greater possibilities.

.

Her mouth is sharp, words cutting and witty, but his is just the same. With his blue eyes, brown hair, and a deceiving voice - trained alongside the best to fool and trick the enemy by any means necessary - he devours her soul and her lips, pink and plump, taking them against his own with such intensity and desire that he could never deny him enterance.

It becomes no surprise to Kono that her every feeling is now consumed by his presence and his opinion of her.

.

It's in the times that she is as fearless and reckless as he - chasing a dangerous criminal down a back alley, tackling the man down with an effortless motion or shooting a sniper with incredible precision - that he is able to forget just how young she actually is and just how easily her collected demeanor can be shaken.

Steve is reminding once again of this when a little boy dies in front of her, shot point blank in the chest by a heartless man, desperate for power and fortune. Her fragile body tries to save him, working desperately for several minutes, working to keep oxygen in his lungs by supplying him with her own through labored breathes. Her struggles result in a crowd to form, watched by every man at the scene, unable to tear their eyes away from the crumble woman in front of them.

Silence enveloped the atmosphere - the sounds of her sobs as they rack through her body squeeze at his windpipe, preventing him from speaking as well. Steve witnesses as she grows tired, only waiting until she is completely exhausted to pull her away, allowing her the time to satisfy her need to know that she did everything possible.

His strong arms pick her up from the ground as her shoulders slump forward though her own legs are unable to support the weight of her aching conscious. Kono's fist pound at his chest as she continues to plead with the boy to breathe as he has no choice but to drag her away, shielding her eyes from the sight of watching as the boy is stuffed inside a body bag.

.

Steve prefers a certain outfit she wears - a simple gray tank and a pair of black jeans with her newest combat boots.

His wandering gaze is recognized by many parties in the team's headquarters office, though he rather enjoys thinking that he has been able to hide his attraction for all this time while she finds it all quite entertaining, especially when that favorite outfit of his is being taken off - piece by piece - by gentle touch she has never seen him display before, followed by a silent trail of kisses that leaves her breathless.

.

His skin - smelling of blood and sweat and one too many bottles of a certain type of beer he prefers - invades her thoughts.

Kono attempts to dismiss them as if they had never been there, as if they had never existed (or maybe as if he had never existed instead), but the task is difficult and tiring, requiring her to admit that she once loved him at all, the exact opposite of what she's wished for everyone else to believe for so long.

**.**

In the middle of an argument, Kono tells him that he is immensely screwed up, that no one will ever be able to love him. Immediately after the words escape from her lips, her features pool with regret and remorse for the damage she may have caused. Though Steve is aware that the comment should have left him angry and pissed off at her desire to hurt him purposely, all he can bring himself to do is laugh.

.

Her knees are bleeding, red and bruised and all cut up, blood pouring down her shins and in between her toes, soon staining the hardwood floors that she had tried to keep clean for so long. With her hands trembling from adrenaline and utter shock, she stands tall, still, watching him, his expressions and motions, studying him with a keen eye that holds him in a worried state.

Steve cannot help but wonder what she sees (or rather, what she wishes to see) as his hands hold napkins to the torn skin of her body. Each piece becomes soaked in a matter of moments, thrown aside, and replaced by a new one. Soon, her face is pale, white and ghostly, but she still doesn't speak, not a word. He is waiting for something to escape her lips, but nothing comes. Her gaze is piercing, slicing through his body quickly and harshly before he even has the chance to duck.

.

They have a lot of false starts, complete with admission to feelings, almost kisses, and dates that nearly happen but ultimately result in disappointment and one too many dinner reservations being cancelled.

.

The bullet escapes the chamber of the suspect's gun, soars through the thick Hawaiian summer air, and before he has a chance to think, move, or protect, is piercing the material of her white shirt.

For no longer than half a second, Steve begins to wonder if he may be imagining things now for she does not react in the slightest to the bullet. She does not flinch or scream or jump from the sound of the shot as it is fired. The optimistic portion of his brain (a very minimal portion buried in the back somewhere) somehow convinces him that she is wearing her vest and that she is protected.

That small, almost nonexistent piece of his brain - the one which still believes in such a thing call fate and luck or miracles even grows a bit smaller immediately when the palms of her hands grow stained from the color of her blood, thick and crimson, pouring from a hole just above the waistline of her pants.

She does not dies that day, but for months after that, Kono dies in his dreams. It is always longer than necessary and more painful than he is willing to bear, consisting of more than enough blood to make this soldier nauseous.

And no matter how hard he works, she is always dying in his arms, wrapped up into his body where he is able feel her lungs expel their final breathe as he is forced to realize over and over again that he will not be able to save her someday.

_finished._

* * *

Yay! You made it. Like I said, it was really rough. These were all just ideas that have been bothering me for a while and wished to get rid of. Still, I hope you enjoyed and I am hoping to get any feedback you are willing to offer.

Also, I would love to see which particular part you enjoyed the most or were the most intrigued so I will be able to get an idea for stories I could work on later on.

Thanks so much for reading. Have a fabulous day! :)


End file.
